Chatting with ‘Top Chef’ finalist Hung

Check out my interview with Hung Huynh, the Pittsfield-raised chef who is among four contenders going into the finals of “Top Chef.” Part 1 airs at 10 tonight on Bravo; the finale, at 10 p.m. next Wednesday.

Update: Due to an editing error, the story online is shorter than the piece in print and is missing some key parts. Full story after the jump.

Self-described jerk cuts it up on ‘Chef’

By Steve Barnes, senior writer

No contestant on the current “Top Chef,” the Bravo cooking competition now finishing up its third season, turned out to be as easily loathable as the villains of seasons one and two — respectively, Stephen “The Sommelier” Asprinio and Marcel “Wolverine Hair” (aka “Foam Boy”) Vigneron.

But Hung Huynh, 29, stood out as season three’s most arrogant as well as the most technically accomplished. (For overall disagreeableness, the prize went to Howie “Sweathog” Kleinberg.)

Huynh is one of four top finishers who battle it out in a two-part finale beginning tonight (10 p.m. on Bravo). The winner will be revealed next Wednesday.

“I was a (jerk) at times,” says Huynh, on the telephone from his job as executive sous chef at Restaurant Guy Savoy in Las Vegas. He grew up in Pittsfield, Mass., where his mother, Tran Thuong, has long owned the eatery in which he learned to cook, Kim’s Dragon Restaurat. His 33-year-old brother, Huy, is now the chef there.

Huynh says, “I was an exaggerated version of myself on TV, as a strategy. … If they were worrying whether I was being a (jerk), they weren’t concentrating on their cooking. I knew none of those guys could outcook me.”

Such comments are vintage Huynh, sounding like reasonable statements of fact to his fans, preening boasts to his detractors. When “Top Chef” returned in June with a new batch of 15 competitors, Huynh quickly emerged as a top-flight talent, one given to sprinting around the kitchen and possessed of wizardly knife skills; even head judge Tom Colicchio, the chef-entrepreneur behind the growing empire of Craft restaurants, laughed with appreciation and disbelief at the dexterity with which Huynh dismantled whole chickens.

But, too, Huynh’s food was judged at times less tasty than cerebral, and his supreme assuredness in his own talents more than once offput viewers, fellow competitors and the judges.

“I regret talking back to Tom Colicchio,” Huynh says, about one of his reactions to criticism. He’d also take back a comment that a rival’s dish was so easy that a “monkey could do it.”

Otherwise, he says, “I was there to win, and I was there to make good TV. That’s what it was – a cooking competition on TV. I promised (Bravo) that I was going to be good on TV, and that’s what I set out to do.” Case in point: a blinding-fast julienning of vegetables, done without looking at his cutting board. “I have good technique,” he says, “but that was all for the camera.”

So, too, was the character Exaggerated Hung, who described himself in one episode as a “certified professional ass—-” and one of his competitor’s dishes as “slummy.”

“If a meaner, exaggerated version of me was a distraction to the others, that was all for the better,” Huynh says.

He says he does not dislike his fellow contestants – but then mentions C.J. Jacobsen, a 6-foot-10 Californian who has been trashing Huynh in inteviews. Huynh dispatches Jacobson with a comment as sharp as a knife blade: “C.J. … has been saying that my food is soulless. Well, his food had so much soul that it couldn’t keep him here (on the show). I’m still standing.”

Huynh is prohibited from even hinting at who comes out on top. (The finale was shot in Aspen, Colo., earlier this year, though much of the show took place in Miami.) Regardless of the result, “Top Chef’” served its purpose for him.

“It opened up so many doors already. I met so many people,” Huynh says. “I was a star waiting to be discovered. Everything has really worked out.”

One Response

So I saw “Top Chef” last night, Hung is jerk but now I wonder how much is editing and for ratings…He seems to be an amazing cook…I hope to see him back at the family restaurant for an appearance or two.

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